Season 1

If you're leaning back in your armchair thinking "I think I've seen this film before" you're probably right. The Last Man On Earth is based on the novel I Am Legend, and I Am Legend was also adapted as The Omega Man which starred Charlton Heston. The Last Man On Earth was going to be produced by Hammer films but they passed the script on to Robert Lippert, their American associate from American International Pictures - I'll be showing a lot of films from American International Pictures during this season. He decided to produce the film in Rome, where people were lying around in the streets for free, rather than America where they'd have to pay them to do it.

This week we have a rare film for you, the 1942 relic The Mad Monster, starring George Zucco and Glenn Strange and...that pretty much tells you all you need to know. There's a monster in it, he's mad. George Zucco is the mad scientist and Glenn Strange is the mad monster.

There's a couple of things I should point out at the start. First of all, the most astute of you will know that a league is a unit of distance, not depth. So when they say The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues, it should really be The Phantom From 10,000 Fathoms. But if it was from 10,000 fathoms it would be from roughly eleven miles deep in the ocean, or more than the depth of the Marianas Trench, which is substantially more than the twenty feet of water we see it in. Which brings me to my second point. If we can actually see it, then it's not a phantom. It's actually more like The Creature From The Black Lagoon's hillbilly cousin. So in short, it's not a 'Phantom' and it's not from '10,000 Leagues', but in every other way the title is completely accurate. It's definitely 'From'.

Here's a couple of good reasons why Evil Brain From Outer Space makes no sense at all. It's actually three films cut into one. First is Supergiant: The Space Mutant Appears, then Supergiant Continues: The Devil's Incarnation, and finally Supergiant Continues: The Poison Moth Kingdom. So here's a simple guide to work out which film is which: When the evil brain-bat-thing appears on screen, it's Space Mutant Appears. If it's the scary hag woman, it's The Devil's Incarnation. If the gentlemen in the skintight black suits show up, it's the late show at The Midnight Shift...I mean, Poison Moth Kingdom, which would be a great name for a band. Let's go through it quickly once more. Space Mutant, Devil's Incarnation, Poison Moth Kingdom. All clear? Good.

Scared To Death is an interesting film for two reasons. The first and most obvious one, is that it's Bela Lugosi's only colour horror film. Secondly, it's the first film to be narrated by a dead character. Not just that, a psychic dead character that can remember scenes to which she wasn't present. How about that! I mean, a dead person narrating is avant garde enough, but a dead narrator with clairvoyance? Wow! Billy Wilder tried the same trick in Sunset Boulevard three years later, but even he wasn't daring enough to give his main character clairvoyance, whether they were alive or dead. Christy Cabanne, the director of Scared To Death, was obviously onto something - or on something.

This is another one of those hybrid films I should have warned you about. It's originally a Spanish horror film that's been whisked over to America and 're-purposed' by Ray Danton, who has directed far more interesting horror films such as Deathmaster and Psychic Killer, neither of which are available to non-profit community-based television presenters like myself. The original Spanish director, Julio Salvador, was responsible for such cinematic enemas as Hello, Glen Ward House Dick and the completely redundant They Killed A Corpse, as well as writing Love Brides Of The Blood Mummy. So you see, he was just as good at making films as he was at naming them.

Director Donald Petrie found his skills at depicting several personalities would come in handy later on when he directed Sybil with Sally Field, Sally Field and Sally Field. David Janssen is more used to being the persecuted than the persecutee as Doctor Richard Kimble in The Fugitive. No, not Mister Kimble from Green Acres...he was the original Richard Kimble before Harrison Ford. Yes, it was a television series before it became a movie. No, not like M*A*S*H, the other way around. Like the Mod Squad...no, neither did I. Where was I? That's right, David Janssen had been on both pointy ends of the law, as Richard Kimble in The Fugitive and as Harry O in, um...don't worry, it'll come to me. Anyway, so he's used to playing a lawman, or being locked up...but enough of his private life. Of course, I shouldn't go much further without mentioning the two great character actors in Moon Of The Wolf, so I won't. In fact, I'll stop right here...

I bet you're clambering to know why this is Coppola's first 'official' film. Before this he directed two softcore porn films, The Bellboy And The Showgirl and This Time For Sure, also known as Wide Open Spaces until the actresses complained. Anyway, he left both of those off his CV. He also directed one-fifth of The Terror, along with Roger Corman, Monte Hellman, Jack Hill, and a struggling young actor by the name of Jack Nicholson. Of course, Francis and I had worked together on the temple scene from Apocalypse Now. That's when he asked me to call him what his creditors called him: Mister Bucko. I remember his words to this day. "Nigel, you should eat more, you're all skin and, well, bone, really. Have some of my famous Spaghetti Bolognese!" To cut a long story short, I ate his spaghetti bolognese, and that's how I wound-up as an art installation at the Guggenheim for five months.

Remember at the beginning of the show I said this was more of a montage than a movie? No? Do you remember Australia's first Prime Minister? Well, anyway, most of the film, the bits with the men in them, is from a pretty good Russian film called Planet Of Storms made in 1964. Because Russia wasn't a signatory to the Berne copyright convention, Roger Corman got his hands on the film cheaply and made it into two films - Voyage To The Prehistoric Planet and Voyage To The Planet Of Prehistoric Women. Unfortunately the one time they were on a double-bill together, the patrons couldn't enter the cinema because the marque blocked the entrance.

Saxon has been a mainstay of genre cinema since Enter The Dragon, Cannibal Apocalypse, Hands Of Steel, Battle Beyond The Stars, and of course the classic miniseries Great Heroes Of The Bible. He is less fondly remembered for the notorious episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, when he is framed for the torture killing of Phyllis by Ted Baxter. Saxon was in great demand for post-apocalyptic films, because when he's not working in the film industry, he actually lives as a warlord in his private fortress with his company of leather-clad minions. In L.A. that's just considered a lifestyle choice. So Terry Marcel signed up John Saxon knowing all the costuming, the fortress, the minions and the torture instruments would all be provided free. Almost free. Saxon usually required a small stipend in the form of a comely wench or gunpowder, but you'll see how that works out.

Producer Joseph E. Levine's masterpiece. The more astute of you may have realised by now the Martians are devoid of their usual weaponry: Tripods, death rays, etc. They must have all been in the shop when they kidnapped Santa. In fact, as Martians go, they're sort of puny and whiny, not so much warriors as bureaucrats, really. That's why they've held off invading Earth, they know they'd be in awash of liability claims. And we can see some not-so-subtle propaganda here. The socialistic Martians have lost the ability to have fun, so they need Santa to show them a good time, like the capitalist whore he is.

The stars of Creepers have been in some of the all-time greats of genre cinema. It's what I call a Two-Clicks-Away film. If you look up the film on the IMDB, it's just Two-Clicks-Away from some of the greatest films of all time. For example, Jennifer Connelly won an Oscar for A Beautiful Mind, and many people assume her first film was Labyrinth with Jim Henson and David Bowie, but she was actually selected for Labyrinth by Henson because of her performance in Creepers. Connelly was also in the genre classics Dark City, Hulk, The Rocketeer and Requiem For A Dream - I'm so glad they didn't use her final scene from that film for the Oscars. Her first film was Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In America. If you click on Dario Argento, you get not only Deep Red, Suspiria and Do You Like Hitchcock, but also one of my all-time favourite westerns, Once Upon A Time In The West, with Bernardo Bertolucci and Sergio Leone.

Like many classics of modern cinema, Bad Taste was banned in Queensland, until the censorship board was disbanded in the 1990s in a unique ruling that had declared itself obscene. Out of all the low-budget films we've screened, Bad Taste is the one that demonstrates that all you need is some film equipment, your friends and family, and about 280 free weekends. In fact, the filming went on for so long...how long? It went on for so long that Craig Smith the actor (in the Pia Zadora sense of the word) got married and divorced during the filming. He disappears for a while because his Christian wife didn't like him working on Sundays.